The Nature of a Marriage
by Hedgewitchery
Summary: Random moments from the lives of Miles and Ekaterin after the last chapter of A Civil Campaign.
1. I

**A/N:** Miles/Ekaterin - random moments from life after the last chapter of _A Civil Campaign_.

* * *

I.

Ekaterin woke a few hours before dawn with an arm thrown across her body and someone's warm breath tickling the back of her neck.

For a moment she froze in horror; then she came all the way awake, and her brain belatedly registered the weight of the arm, and the scent of the man it belonged to, and the shapes in the darkened room around them.

_Miles._

_Not Tien. Not ever again._

_Thank God._

Her heart was pounding, though, and she had to pee, which was probably what had woken her in the first place. A glass of water would be nice, too.

Gently she lifted and repositioned Miles's arm and wriggled out from under the blankets. Miles frowned a little, and made a small protesting noise, but didn't wake. As silently as possible, she felt her way across the room to the door of the en-suite bath, pausing to wrap her discarded dressing-gown around herself against the chill.

In the nighttime stillness of Vorkosigan House – quieter by far than her uncle's house in the University district, whether in fact, because farther removed from the noise of the street, or only in her imagination – the sound of the toilet flushing seemed horribly loud. Some kind of non-verbal free-association called to Ekaterin's mind an image of Aunt Vorthys huddled in their lavatory-prison on the Komarran transfer station, which made her tremble in remembered fury and fear. She knelt with her forehead on the cool edge of the bath until the trembling stopped and her mind followed its odd lavatorial tangent to a more congenial end: Armsman Pym standing tall and terribly upright in her aunt's garden, telling Martya Koudelka all about the bug-butter-down-the-drain catastrophe …

By the time she had finished washing her hands and running herself a glass of water, she was giggling helplessly.

The laughter died on her lips as she opened the bathroom door.

The reading lamp on what would soon be her nightstand had been switched on, low. Miles was sitting on the edge of the bed in his underwear, feet dangling, hands clasped between his knees, staring fixedly at the now-empty chair where she had tossed her dressing-gown the evening before, when …

Her heart constricted at the forlorn expression on his face.

"Miles?" Her voice caught his attention, and he turned toward her the same appallingly thrilled face she remembered from that morning in the not-yet-garden. Good heavens, had he thought she'd run away?

_It wouldn't be the first time, after all …_

Crossing the half-lit bedroom between one breath and the next, she sank down beside him on the edge of the bed and slid one arm around his waist, then tilted her head so that her cheek rested on the top of his head. Their bodies relaxed against each other, _it's true, it's real, please, love, believe it …_

"Nightmare?" she asked quietly.

"Not … not exactly." He twisted a little to look up into her face, dauntingly earnest. "Ekaterin, if – if you ever feel pushed or pulled or, or manipulated again, if I – if you –" Words failed him, it appeared, and for a moment he settled for grabbing her free hand and squeezing it tight. "Just tell me," he said at last. "Just tell me, and I'll stop – don't … Just tell me. Promise?"

"I promise." Ekaterin sealed the promise with a kiss, and then finished the sentence Miles had left half-spoken: "No more fleeing into the night."

And then, when his cheeks flushed and a glint of sheepish humour lit his face, she judged it safe to tease him gently: "I was using the bathroom, love. People do that, you know."

As she had hoped, this drew a snort of laughter. Miles slid off the bed, so that, sitting, she had to look up at him instead of down, and wrapped her in his arms. "Milady Ekaterin," he whispered in her ear. "My lady, my love …"

"Yes," said Ekaterin. "And yes, and yes." She hugged him fiercely, _mine, mine, mine._

"Miles?" she said, several minutes later.

He loosed his hold and stood back to look at her inquiringly.

_My botany project is due in three days. I have a biochemistry exam next week. I should be sleeping._

… _Drat it, Miles, why can't I resist you even when I'm _trying_?_

She had intended to point out that they ought to go back to sleep; somehow, what came out instead was, "Should we maybe continue this in a, in, um … more horizontally?"

_Don't blush, woman! You're about to marry the man, for goodness' sake._

A new and positively wicked gleam appeared in Miles's grey eyes. "_Yes_, milady!"


	2. II

II.

"Lord Aral! Lady Heleeeeen!"

Ekaterin followed Armsman Roic's frantic bellowing across the lawn and down toward the dock, where an ominous splashing sound made her quicken her steps.

"Roic, what's going on?" she demanded, breathless.

Roic ceased bellowing and began looking terrified. "Milady," he managed, and then stalled, his eyes darting, apparently of their own volition, in the direction of the splashing sounds.

Ekaterin's brows climbed as dark heads began to break the roiled surface of the long lake – three of them, two small ones spluttering indignantly, the larger one grimly amused.

"Lost something, Armsman Roic?" Lord Vorkosigan inquired. He was holding one flailing six-year-old around the waist with each arm.

Roic was crimson with humiliation and unexpressed fury – inexpressible, really, in this company – and appeared incapable of speech. Aral and Helen, deposited on the dock in little dripping heaps, nevertheless managed to look up at him in triumph – they hadn't, Ekaterin realized, yet registered her presence.

"See, Roic? I told you we _could too_ swim!" Helen crowed. She scrambled to her feet and shook out her long dark hair, sending a shower of lake water all over Roic's hitherto immaculate uniform trousers.

"I didn't mean you weren't _able_ to swim, Lady Helen," Roic said, trying with marginal success to recover his dignity. "I meant you weren't _allowed_. Not without permission, and with," he gulped, "no clothes on."

Miles, fetchingly attired (from Ekaterin's point of view, anyway) in ratty old shorts and singlet rendered transparent by their drenched condition, had levered himself up onto the dock just in time to hear this last exchange. To everyone else's surprise, he threw back his head and laughed.

"Should've seen that one coming, I suppose," he said at last, shaking his head. He looked up at Ekaterin and winked. _What's the story there, I wonder? I must remember to ask him, later…_

The children were starting to shiver. "You two are coming back up to the house now and getting dressed," said Ekaterin, and was amused to see their exchange of glances, _Is Mama really mad at us, or is she just trying not to laugh?_ She took pity on them, cracking a dry smile; Aral looked relieved, his sister downright smug. With a firm hand on each child's shoulder, Ekaterin marched them back up toward the house.

"But you _said_ we could go swimming, Mama!" Helen protested, halfway up.

"You did, Mama." Aral nodded earnestly.

"I did say you could go swimming," Ekaterin replied, her voice dry. "I didn't say you could go swimming unsupervised, without asking anyone, and in the altogether. So now you can wait until tomorrow."

There was a brief silence while they digested this – deciding, Ekaterin suspected, whether it was worth arguing the point with her or whether they would do better to wait and tackle their father, later.

She was wrong, or anyway not entirely right; after a moment Helen said plaintively, "But we weren't swimming in the altogether, Mama! We were swimming in the _lake_."


	3. III

III.

Ekaterin sighed as she hitched her whimpering offspring higher on her shoulder, and smiled ruefully at Miles, sprawled in the rocking-chair with the other baby asleep – finally – in his arms. _It's only been three weeks, and we've already lost about three months' sleep. Whatever possessed us to have two at once?_

Miles's eyelids drooped, then closed. Ekaterin tensed, her gaze fixed on the line of the arm and hand that supported Aral's tiny head; but after a moment his eyes opened again and he smiled, reassuring. "Not sleeping. Just resting my eyes," he murmured, low.

Ekaterin relaxed.

Helen was winding down, finally. Ekaterin manoeuvred around her to check the chrono on her wrist: only 0200. Maybe they would get some sleep tonight, after all.

If only Miles wouldn't insist on helping with the night-cycle shift – she might be tired, but he looked absolutely wrecked. It couldn't be good for him, in his still-convalescent condition.

But that, after all, was what had – as she'd put it a minute ago – possessed them to have both Aral and Helen now, together: Miles, Miles's possibly (now probably) foreshortened life-expectancy, Miles's obsession with seeing his, their, children grow up.

And she loved his determination to share the burden of caregiving – when Nikki was this age, she'd had to do it all on her own – but couldn't he see what a bad idea it was to push himself so hard … ?

"Ekaterin?" His voice was anxious; she realized she'd let her worries show, unknowing. _Of course, Miles was always good at reading me …_

Helen was warm and limp and heavy in her arms now, fine dark baby-hair damp with sweat. Ekaterin laid her gently in the closest bassinet and turned back to Miles.

"Sleeping?" she whispered, confirming. Miles nodded. Carefully, gently, she took Aral from his arms and settled him in the other bassinet.

She was about to turn away again when Miles stepped up beside her, moving stiffly, and slid an arm about her waist, snugging her close against his side. "What are you thinking, milady Ekaterin?"

Ekaterin wiped a surreptitious wrist across her eyes. _That I worry for them, and for you. That I didn't sign up for another round of widowed motherhood. That I wish we had another eighty years, and I'm afraid we may not even have twenty. That I never thought happiness could hurt as much as misery._ "That it's a miracle your mother survived your childhood," she said at last, honestly. _I'm just tired. It will all seem better tomorrow._

He peered up at her in the half-light, searching her face for … what? But all he said was, "You're exhausted, love. Come to bed."

* * *

"You could get a swordstick like Commodore Koudelka's, sir," Nikki suggested eagerly.

Count Vorkosigan looked thoughtful. "You could, you know."

They were all ganging up on him, dammit. "Don't need a stick," Miles growled. His teeth were gritted against vague, unfocused pain. "Sword or otherwise. Just … more practice. 'S'nothing wrong with my legs – just haven't been walking enough."

Nikki looked as if he wished he'd kept his mouth shut, and Miles immediately wished _he_ had – he was trying to set the kid a good example, not intimidate him into monosyllables the way his father had. _Well played, idiot boy. Ekaterin will be just thrilled by that little performance._

"Well, we'll just let you get on with it, then," said the Count, "since you don't seem to want company just now. Nikki, didn't you say something about a project for your Komarran History class … ?"

Miles winced at this encompassing rebuke. Nikki looked back at him for a moment, uncertain, as they left the library; Miles tried for a reassuring smile, but suspected what he'd produced was more like a grimace.

He hobbled toward the nearest chair, and sank into it with a muffled groan.

It wasn't the pain, though, really; pain and he were old, well, not _friends_, but at any rate he knew where he stood with pain. It was that he felt, all the time, twenty-six hours a day, so tired that he could hardly think. He'd known parenting newborns would be tiring, everyone said that – even Ekaterin had said that, and she'd done it more recently than most people he knew; but he hadn't expected to have to experience that fatigue on top of the bone-deep weariness and the _God-dammit, haven't I done this once already? _fragility that he'd brought home as souvenirs from Graf Station. He was practically asleep on his feet right this minute. Absurd.

_It's a miracle your mother survived your childhood_, Ekaterin had said last night. He wished now he'd asked her what she meant, but they'd both been punch-drunk with exhaustion …

It was easier during the day, when his parents and assorted staff and visitors could be pressed into baby-holding service; even Ivan had been persuaded to lend a hand once or twice (the look of comical dismay on his face when the heir to the Vorkosigan's District spit up all over his undress greens had been worth at least a full night's sleep in restoring Miles's good humour), and Delia and Olivia used-to-be-Koudelka seemed to be around all the time, presumably to get in training for their own not-so-far-in-the-future offspring. The night-cycle shift, by unspoken agreement, was his and Ekaterin's alone, and Miles both cherished and dreaded those hours of dimly lit feeding and rocking and floor-walking. _It could be worse – we could have had three or four …_

* * *

A knock at the door startled Miles awake; at his muttered "Come!" it opened to admit the Vicereine of Sergyar, wearing a _we're-going-to-have-a-little-talk-you-and-I _expression that would have sent Miles into full strategic retreat if he hadn't been too tired to move.

"I'm sorry I hurt Nikki's feelings," he said instead, before his mother had even sat down. "I'll hunt him up later and apologize. Soon, I mean. Really soon." _As soon as I can haul my ass out of this chair and not fall over._

Clearly, however, his pre-emptive strike had been a tactical error; the Vicereine's eyebrows climbed as she settled herself in a chair across from his, and, far from appearing satisfied by his contrition, she looked unpleasantly … _enlightened._ "The trouble with babies is that once you've cracked the seal on that replicator, you can't ever put 'em back in," she said, surprising a snort of rueful agreement from her son.

"It's not that I want to put them back," he said. "I'm just starting to suspect it might've been easier to, you know, spread them out a little …"

"Your father and I did wonder about that. We decided you and Ekaterin must have your reasons."

"Well, for one thing, I didn't expect to come home from that last trip with such a bad case of being completely bloody useless." Miles saw his mother wince at the bitter anger in his voice – a brief reaction, almost instantly controlled – and buried his face in his hands. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for."

"Ekaterin is worried about you," said the Vicereine quietly, "and so are your father and I. We're here to help, you know; you two don't have to do this all on your own."

"Did Ekaterin—" No; he was being unfair. "They're my children. Looking after them is my responsibility."

"_Such_ a refreshing attitude for a Barrayaran man." His mother's tone was just a _little_ dry. "Nevertheless, you do not serve your children, or your wife, or anyone or anything, by endangering your own health."

"… said the woman who arose from childbed to trek through the Dendarii Mountains in the service of the Imperium."

"_Miles_." He'd succeeded in exasperating Cordelia Vorkosigan – there was a certain satisfaction in that. "'Arose from childbed,' ha! Believe me, if you'd ever _seen_ a body birth—" she shuddered, Betan horror at old-Barrayaran barbarity. "In any case, what I did had nothing to do with the Imperium and everything to do with helping Gregor and his mother."

Miles opened his hand, _quod erat demonstrandum._

His mother eyed him coolly. "I refer you to my previous statement: you're not doing Ekaterin or Aral or Helen or Nikki any good by overdoing it the way you have been."

Miles's hands were trembling, he noticed; he clasped them firmly together, which seemed to help. Too late, though, he could tell by his mother's suddenly thin-lipped expression.

"I'm going to put this as plainly as I can, kiddo." _Which means you were doing what, before?_ "Not only are you not helping Ekaterin, you're making things worse."

Miles blinked, taken aback: "I'm _what_?"

"First of all, as long as you won't give yourself a break, Ekaterin can't either – nor can she beg you to leave the nights to her, lest you interpret it as lack of trust in you, or lack of appreciation for your help. Second of all, by driving yourself to exhaustion you're adding to her emotional burden, forcing her to worry about your welfare in addition to her daughter's and her sons'." She paused. "'Other ways to serve,' remember? In a year's time you'll have two toddlers, Miles, and believe me, you're going to need all your energy to keep up with them."

"Especially, I'm given to understand, if they take after their Da."

Miles looked up, startled, to see Ekaterin standing in the doorway, temporarily baby-less. She smiled at him and, waving down his attempt to stand up, crossed the room to perch on the arm of his chair. "They're sleeping," she said, in answer to his unspoken query. "Both of them at once, can you believe it?"

"You should get some sleep, too," he said immediately. "They'll be up again before you know it."

"On one condition."

_She _has_ been taking lessons from my mother_, Miles thought, torn between annoyance and relief; and his mother, suddenly, was nowhere to be seen … "Which would be what?"

"That _you_ agree to take a sleeptimer tonight and _not_ get up with the babies." She regarded him sternly. "_Not_ because I don't trust you with them, or because I don't appreciate your doing your fair share, but because—"

"All right, all right." Miles held up his hands. _Might as well admit defeat, I guess._ "You don't need to tell me I'm not at my best – I've just been over that with my mother. But, Ekaterin, there are two of them, and only one of you …"

To his astonishment, Ekaterin laughed. "Miles, your parents have been waiting for grandchildren for a _decade_. I promise you, I'll have help." She grew thoughtful, then, and went on: "I don't know how she did it, how she didn't lose her mind … Nikki's illness took over my whole life, for so long, and that was something so easily fixed …"

_So that's what she meant. I _am_ an idiot._ Miles let himself imagine briefly how it would feel to learn that one of his children was badly injured or fatally ill, to be told he could expect to outlive his son or his daughter …

"I'm sorry," he said slowly. "I've been so busy feeling sorry for myself, and angry that I'm not pulling my weight, I never realized how lucky I am to _be_ the damaged one, and not …"

Most people would have contradicted him, or at least asked what he meant. Ekaterin said, "One damn thing after another," and hugged him around the shoulders.

They both started in alarm as a full-throated wail erupted from their nursery comlinks. But Ekaterin had only just got to her feet when the wail died down to a grizzle and a familiar voice came fuzzily over the com: "Sh, now. It's all right, kiddo, Grandmama's got you."

Miles and Ekaterin looked at each other. Ekaterin sat down again, this time in her mother-in-law's vacated chair.

The Vicereine of Sergyar began to sing, her voice fading in and out on their comlinks as she paced around the nursery: _Hush, my baby, no need to cry; see, the stars are dancing you a sweet lullaby …_

* * *

"Mama?" Nikki peered around the door of the library. "Miles? Pym says dinner is …"

He ran down, nonplussed. Mama and Miles were both here, all right, but he could tell now why they weren't answering.

They obviously hadn't heard him over all the snoring.


End file.
